The Anti-Christian Age

For two millennia, the birth of Christ has been seen as the greatest event in world history. The moment Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, God became man, and eternal salvation became possible.

This date has been the separation point of mankind’s time on earth, with B.C. designating the era before Christ, and A.D., anno domino, in the Year of the Lord, the years after. And how stands Christianity today?

“Christianity is in danger off being wiped out in its biblical heartlands,” says the British think tank Civitas.

In Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia and Nigeria, Christians face persecution and pogroms. In Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, conversion is a capital offense. In a century, two-thirds of all the Christians have vanished from the Islamic world.

In China, Christianity is seen as a subversive ideology of the West to undermine the regime.

In Europe, a century ago, British and German soldiers came out of the trenches to meet in no-man’s land to sing Christmas carols and exchange gifts. It did not happen in 1915, or ever again.

In the century since, all the Western empires have vanished. All of their armies and navies have melted away. All have lost their Christian faith. All have seen their birthrates plummet. All their nations are aging, shrinking and dying, and all are witnessing invasions from formerly subject peoples and lands.

The systematic purging of Christian teachings and symbols from our public schools and public square has produced a growing population — 20 percent of the nation, 30 percent of the young — who answer “none” when asked about their religious beliefs and affiliations.

In the lead essay in the Book Review of Sunday’s New York Times, Paul Elie writes of our “post-Christian” fiction, where writers with “Christian convictions” like Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor are a lost tribe.

“Where has the novel of belief gone?” he asks.

Americans understand why Mao’s atheist heirs who have lost their Marxist-Leninist faith and militants Islamists fear and detest the rival belief system of Christianity. But do they understand the animus that lies behind the assault on their faith here at home?

In a recent issue of New Oxford Review, Andrew Seddon (“The New Atheism: All the Rage”) describes a “Reason Rally” in Washington, D.C., a “coming out” event sponsored by atheist groups. Among the speakers was Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion,” who claims that “faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.”

Christians have been infected by a “God virus,” says Dawkins. They are no longer rational beings. Atheists should treat them with derisory contempt. “Mock Them!” Dawkins shouted. “Ridicule them! In public!”

In “The End of Faith,” atheist Sam Harris wrote that “some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people.”

“Since the New Atheists believe that religion is evil,” notes Seddon, “that it ‘poisons everything,’ in (Christopher) Hitchens’ words — it doesn’t take much effort to see that Harris is referring to religions and the people who follow them.”

Now since atheists are still badly outnumbered in America and less well-armed than the God-and-Country boys, and atheists believe this is the only life they have, atheist suggestions to “kill people” of Christian belief is probably a threat Christians need not take too seriously.

With reference to Dawkins’ view that the Christian faith “requires no justification and brooks no argument,” Seddon makes a salient point.

While undeniable that Christianity entails a belief in the supernatural, the miraculous — God became man that first Christmas, Christ raised people from the dead, rose himself on the first Easter Sunday and ascended into heaven 40 days later — consider what atheists believe.

They believe that something came out of nothing, that reason came from irrationality, that a complex universe and natural order came out of randomness and chaos, that consciousness came from non-consciousness and that life emerged from non-life.

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Seddon does not speak for atheists in general when he says that they believe that “a multiverse containing an inconceivably large number of universes spontaneously created itself.” Many believe in a much looser “multiverse” in which an inconceivably large number of universes spontaneously created themselves, with absolutely nothing connecting them to each other. Still others cling to the quaint old belief that our universe that began with a big bang billions of years ago is all there is. Or, as one of their number, Carl Sagan, wrote in the opening sentence of his book _Cosmos_ “The cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be.”

This quaint old belief has become incredible in the face of the fantastic fine-tuning of our universe. Cambridge Professor Martin Rees, who is also the Royal Astronomer of England, wrote a whole book about, titled _Just Six Numbers_. He is one of those who believe in the much looser multiverse, about which he wrote:

“These six numbers constitute a ‘recipe’ for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values: if any one of them were to be ‘untuned’, there would be no stars and no life. Is this tuning just a brute fact, a coincidence? Or is it the providence of a benign Creator? I take the view that it is neither. An infinity of other universes may well exist where the numbers are different. Most would be stillborn or sterile. We could only have emerged (and therefore we naturally now find ourselves) in a universe with the ‘right’ combination.”

Joyce

God became man at the moment of the Incarnation, about nine months before the first Christmas.

TeaPot562

Atheists must, if they accept the Big Bang theory, think that “all of a sudden” at the moment of creation of the universe, an incredibly heavy mass at an extremely high temperature (in the millions of degrees!) just happened to occur at a point singularity; from which it exploded and expanded into all the galaxies existing today. Incredible!
I prefer the explanation “And God said, ‘Let there be light! And there was light.'”
TeaPot562

chaco

When Darwin concocted the theory of evolution, he was unaware of the complexities contained in a single cell; all the DNA arrangements etc. I’ve read that to claim it all happened by chance is as incredible as claiming that a tornado can go through an auto salvage yard & create a Rolls Royce. I’ve also heard that most respected scientists acknowledge the absurdity of such chances and agree that nothing can come from nothing. If they want to hold to their Godless stance, they talk about the 1st cell being deposited by aliens or arriving by comet. If we must somehow resemble what we come from, we necessarily have a “Divine instinct” about what we are. I like this quote prompted by such an instinct; “The heart has reasons that the mind knows little about.”

http://www.facebook.com/skorlan Sue Korlan

There is no evidence for a multiverse. It’s just something atheists have made up to try and disprove the existence of a Creator.

Father George

Bravo, Mr. Buchanan, very well said. Very well said.

kelso

Faith in the mysteries of our religion deals with realities above reason, but reasonable. When atheists maintain that something came from nothing, it is unreasonable, defying the law of causality, or worse, the law of contradiction. To say that the effect is greater than the cause (supposing the atheist believes in the eternity of matter, as some do) is to maintain that something gave what it didn’t have. No amount of billions of years and “chance” can effect that. Ultimately, the atheist is left with the impossible conclusion of being issuing from none-being. A miracle defies the law of nature, but not reason.

Dave

Anno Domini, Mr. Buchanan.

Charlie500

Right on Pat. It is atheism that is irrational and illogical and it is time to turn the tables on their nonsense.

MtnManChris

The Big Bang fits nicely with the creation stories actually. As a scientist, I struggled with “WHAT” exploded at that crucial moment. “WHAT” existed before time t=0 in order for “IT” to blow up and start everything. The answer to this question is God, or God’s Love exploded. God’s love existed always, yet we know the universe (or multiverse) began at a sigle point in time, the start of creation.(Gen 1:3). The argument between the creationists and the evolutionist simply goes away if we believe that God inspired the bible in order to teach us about his love for us. Who cares if 7 days was 7 “earth days”. What is important is that 7 is the number of completion, which is why we have 7 days in the week, and not 10, or 3 or some other arbitrary number and one of those days is for rest and coming closer to our God and creator, who wants to know us, individually.

FatimaToday

Botom line…. it takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a Christian. For an atheist believes that all that we see, know, understand etc.. came from nothing. That my friend takes far more faith then any Christian I know who’s faith tells them that God created all and that God became incarnate in the flesh of Jesus to save us from our sinfullness.

HigherCalling

Chesterton said something similar:

“Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.”

noreligiousarrogance

ATHEISTS ARE CLEARLY WRONG. THEY TAKE THE LACK OF ACTUAL CONCRETE EVIDENCE ESTABLISHING THE EXISTENCE OF A SUPREME BEING AND CLAIM THAT IT AS PROOF THAT NO SUPREME BEING EXISTS. THAT ARGUMENT DEFIES ALL LOGIC AND REASON.

HOWEVER, CHRISTIANS ARE EQUALLY WRONG IN CONTENDING THAT THEY HAVE ACTUAL PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF A SUPREME BEING IN THE BIBLE. THE BIBLE IS NOTHING MORE THAN INFORMATION WRITTEN DOWN BY OTHER HUMAN BEINGS.

THE CHRISTIAN’S RESPONSE – “NO, THE BIBLE IS ALL TRUE BECAUSE IT IS THE INSPIRED WORD OF GOD. IT WAS SIMPLY TRANSCRIBED BY HUMAN BEINGS”. GOOD RESPONSE, IF IT WERE TRUE. SO YOU ASK THEM, “OK, WELL WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE TO ESTABLISH THAT THE BIBLE IS, IN FACT, THE INSPIRED WORD OF GOD?” THEIR ANSWER – “IT SAYS IT IN THE BIBLE”.

ANYONE WITH HALF A BRAIN AND EVEN ONE OUNCE OF INTELLECTUAL HONESTY SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE THE IDIOTIC NATURE OF SUCH A SELF-ACTUATING ARGUMENT?

THE KORAN ALSO STATES THAT IT IS THE INSPIRED WORD OF GOD, AS DOES THE BOOK OF MORMON. MEMBERS OF ORGANIZED RELIGIONS CLEARLY HAVE THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE WHATEVER THEY WANT, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER IT IS LOGICAL OR COMPLETELY ILLOGICAL. BUT PLEASE, STOP PRETENDING THAT THE BIBLE IS ALL TRUE JUST BECAUSE PEOPLE CLAIM IT IS TRUE. STOP INSISTING THAT THE REST OF US MUST BELIEVE THAT THE BIBLE IS ANYTHING MORE THAN A COLLECTION OF ANCIENT STORIES CREATED BY OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, OR THAT IT HAS ANY MORE TRUE CREDIBILITY THAN A COLLECTION OF FAIRYTALES.

nah

The Bible is the story of man’s salvation, it’s a love story beyond compare. The Bible is not a history or scientific exploration of God and his existence. Truth is revealed and fulfilled in the word made flesh. His incarnation, death and resurrection was prophesized for many years, and in exact detail, before His birth, by multiple prophets and inspired authors. No other religious figure can claim that prefigurement.
The Bible is a collaboration alright, but it is a divinely inspired collaboration that no human imagination could ever produce. Not only does the Bible plumb the endless depths of God’s love for man, but it also describes man’s fruitless cycles of selfish destruction. Cycles that continue and repeat to this day. No other book is more relevant, timeless and misunderstood.
To argue that a book authored by humans can’t possibly reveal the existence of God is silly, even to this half-brained, intellectually depraved, fallen man. How else are we to know God’s revelation; by reading the clouds or waiting for His memoir to drop out of the sky. Who dictates how God should reveal himself to man?
What bothers most Bible bashers is proving inspired word. If logic or science can’t prove it, then it can’t be true. If it can’t be proven, then it’s better to believe in nothing. The key is belief, everyone has it. Everyone! Nothing versus something or someone. Who writes your book? Prove it!

jimbo

I like the saying i read from a priest who said, I would rather have believed in a God and found out there was none as`to have not believed in a God and found out there was one!!

Chris

I believe (as a 19 year old Catholic living in 21st century America) that the anti-religious movement began long ago. Even though the founding father’s of our country set up a political state not to interfere with religious beliefs, they were all Deists. Less than a hundred years later, the treatment of African-America slaves was brutal, and the Southern Baptists did nothing to stop it. Less than a hundred years after that, world wars to fight authoritarian and communist powers led us to killing millions of people, which led into the “hippie” movement where relative spirituality began, and “religion” wasn’t the norm. For those on Fox News that say that America’s moral decline is starting, it’s already began.

There may not be any observable evidence (yet) , but nothing is impossible with God. A multiverse is less remarkable than the Incarnation.

Annamarie

I think the reason some people are atheists is that they are just plain lazy. They don’t want to have to answer to Anyone for the things they do, and do not want to have to be anyplace they don’t want to be, such as church.

On some level, they know they are sinning, but they desperately don’t want to face it, so they claim to be something that will applaud their behavior and call it silly things like, “speaking truth to power,” or any number of other goofy things that if they were to go to the trouble of applying reason, they could not defend.

In all of us there is that itch, that empty place we cannot fill on our own, that is the gentle tug of the Holy Spirit. The louder it is denied, the greater they feel that “itch.”

Let us all pray for them, whether they are obnoxious goofballs, such as Richard Dawkins, or Christopher Hitchens (who by now has found out just how wrong he was!) or our own children. Let us all pray that the Holy Spirit will not give up on them, even if He has to turn that itch into a gentle slug from a baseball bat!

Oh, and, great article, Mr. Buchanan! Many thanks, and Happy New Year.

freedomFROMreligionfred.

The anger and paranoia displayed by Buchanan helps me understand the connection I see everywhere between people who loudly proclaim their so called Christianity while idolizing and fetishizing firearms. According to Buchanan there is a threat to Christians from atheists( he selectively quotes a number of writers to make this assertion, as if all atheists have a communal creed) but rejoices in the belief that well armed “God and Country boys” far outnumber them. On a side note “God and Country boys” has a distinct racist sub tone, something that is, I’m sure quite deliberate but that argument is for another day. Now I can assure Buchanan that none of the atheists I know have the least interest in killing Christians despite his fanciful paranoia and that Christians have never had it so good at least in this country. It appears none the less that the creation of a persecution complex and a sense of victimization in some Christians is leading to the embrace of the language of violence. I understand now at least one thread in the right wing Christian identity.

FreedomFROMreligion

Typical right wing nonsense from Buchanan. Cultural arrogance, fear mongering, racism and veiled threats go down well with a certain audience but if we as a people of all races and creeds are to solve our problems we need to find common ground and not allow this divisive and dishonest type of screed to frighten and confuse us.

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